Author . 



*.i*°j> 




Title 



Imprint 



1890 



10--47372-2 OPO 



ADDRESS 



OF 



/ 



JOHN R. STRVRNS, 
Ihtttcb States litmtstev, 

BEFORE AMERICAN CITIZENS IX HONOLULU, H. L, 

JULY 4th, 1B9D. 



AMERICAN PATRIOTISM: PREDOMINANCE IN THE PACIFIC, 



This is the one day of the year on which the American Min- 
ister is allowed by his Government to put aside the pres- 
cribed rules of his office and, as a citizen, to give public 
expression to his opinions. It is in this character alone, 
none Imt myself being responsible for my words, that I im- 
prove the opportunity to speak as an American to Americans, 
and to others present who would commemorate the birth of 
my country. 

Patriotism, Liberty, Independence these words stir the 



H 



n n 



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hearts of true Americans by a mighty inspiration. They Lift 
American minds to an altitude where the. skies are clear and 
brilliant and the air is pure and bracing. The great ideas 
which these words transmit, should never be obscured by 
individual selfishness, by cosmopolitan generalities, not 
pushed aside by partisan ambitions. Patriotism, Liberty, 
Independence— they are a people's life, and without them a 
nation is but a blind, dumb, and hapless concretion in the 
hands of its enslavers. 

It is the first of these Patriotism, so dear to the souls of 
free-men, which I desire to emphasize at this time, though 
the other two are linked forever with the birth of American 
Nationality, whose history is familiar to you all, a Btory 
more stirring and heroic than anything in Grecian epic or 
Roman fable. Omitting at this time eulogy where it seems 
superfluous, turning from a past resplendent with historic 
renown, let us bring before us the duties of the present, the 
demands of the future. 

Patriotism, born of the spiritual intuitions and christian- 
ized conscience of the human soul, which impels a whole 
people to unselfish sacrifice, and a Sidney, a Warren, and a 
glorious host of Freedom's martyrs to think it " sweet to 
die" — this noble sentiment cannot be satisfied by com- 
memorating the past, by the tiring of cannon, and a pro- 
longed explosion of India crackers and bombs. Real 
patriotism is an inspiration to duty. It calls nam to do the 
work well which is immediately before them. If there are 
those who think that it means only the performance of il 
of peril and courage on the field of arms, amid the smoke of 
battle and the clash of bayonets, they are strangely mistaken. 
It would not become us to underestimate the greatness of 
the work done at Bunker Hill, Saratoga, Gettysburg, on 



— 3 — 

hoard the little Monitor, and at Mobile Bay. But Patrio- 
tism is far from ending with these. We should never forget 
that the living sources of the heroism which was thus 
illustrated on arenas of peril and death, were in the moral 
education of the American people, which preceded those ex- 
ploits on land and sea. The motive forces which gave direc- 
tion to American councils and inspired American devotion to 
duty in the war of Independence and in the wonderful 
uprising for the Union from 1861 to 1865 — these had their 
origin in a patriotism which had been nurtured in American 
homes, schools, and churches, and but for these the world 
would never have known of the two great contests for liberty 
and good government, which have so lilted up America in 
the eyes of men, and made her the continental beacon-light 
among the nations. 

That colossal fabric — the American Republic — the grand- 
est structure of government ever reared amid the sands of 
time- with its Federal Constitution, which the ripest states- 
men of the Old World pronounce the most remarkable 
creation of human wisdom known in all the ages — with its 
admirably adjusted municipal, state and national institutions 
— its Supreme Court, the final arbitrator of all questions 
lie! ween the forty-two States — a complex, vet practicable, 
system of government, so elastic in its legal bands and 
machinery as to readily adapt itself to the fast increasing 
population and varied interests of its immense domain. That 
temple of human freedom and of law, the fairness of whose 
proportions no Athenian or Tuscan architect ever surpassed, 
has stood the trial of a century. Once the most terrific 
storm that modern nations ever witnessed, burst upon it, 
wrestled with its strong pillars, and spent its utmost force 
to wrench its corner-stones from their places. But in vain. 



— 4 — 

There it stands in the azure, serene heavens, with no crack 
in its walls, no clouds around its summits. To it the exiles 
of all oppressed lands look with earnest hope, and under its 
peaceful shade foreign millions, weary with unrequited toil, 
are seeking new homes. That wonderous civic- and political 
edifice belongs to a nation which numbers more intelligent, 
liberty-loving men, has a larger aggregate of annual products 
of mine, field, factory and workshop, and more wealth, than 
any other in the world, and along whose iron and water ways 
on land, river, lake and ocean, moves a greater volume of 
commerce than has any other on the globe. No Foreign 
armies are threatening its gates. No hostile Meets cross the 
seas to strike down the starry Hag which floats on its lofty 
turrets. That the sunlight of future centuries may linger 
and play upon it, and its proud walls continue to stand 
firmly as the hope of civilized mankind, patriotic dut\ is 
ever imperative. 

The American Nation has no occasion to be afraid of any 
external foe. If in her infancy she had fears in this regard, 
that period has passed. She has the means of putting into 
the field a larger effective army than has any other nation, 
and possessing within her borders half of the railroads of 
the world, she could readily move it to the necessary points, 
and for home defense can command the services of seven 
million citizen soldiers. She has the money, iron, steel. 
coal, shipyards, skill and men, to create a navy more power- 
ful than any which has ever floated on the seas. Stretching 
across a vast continent and fronting the two great oceans, 
she has an impregnable position. Her commercial allies can 
repose in security and have no fears as to their independence. 
The foes against which America needs most to secure her- 
self, are those within. 



— — 

Thus we are brought to consider what patriotism demands 
of the Americans of to-day, and of those in other lands who 
share their sympathies and hopes. I repeat, we have no 
right to insist in living by what our fathers did. American 
institutions cannot be maintained by burning gunpowder and 
inditing brilliant periods over what George Washington, 
Abraham Lincoln, and their Illustrious associates dared and 
wrought. Patriotism is a living force. Patriotism is an 
nndying flame, which lights the path of duty of individuals 
and of States. It is a perennial inspiration to effort and to 
sacrifice. It demands unsleeping vigilance. It seeks to discover 
the real dangers which imperil society and government. It 
would be vain and delusive for us to deny, that America 
has dangers to-day as she had in former periods of her his- 
tory. Among these are the corruptions which spring from 
commercial greed and concentrated wealth, and those which 
have their origin in the massing together of vast populations 
in our cities, increasing in enormous proportions and with 
a rapidity without a parallel in other nations. How shall 
these be governed so that they bring not the same terrible 
consequences which were the fate of the great cities of 
former centuries? Babylon, Tyre, Carthage and Rome, did 
not fall for want of military force. Jerusalem, with her 
great natural and fortified strength, was conquered by her 
moral corruptions and internal dissensions, even more than 
by Titus and his legions. True patriotism has its founda- 
tion on the solid substratum of Christian ethics. It does not 
scorn the Bible. It does not repudiate the Sabbath. It 
sternly opposes the sweeping demands in the name of amuse- 
ment and roistering license. It refuses to make use of the 
wonderful forces of iron, steam, and electricity to break 
down Christian institutions, the bulwark of free nations. If 



— 6 — 

the vast network of railroads, taking in the continents and 
the islands, with their mighty agencies of capital, commerce, 
and labor, is to be used to abolish the Sabbath and to des- 
troy Christian institutions, then those who own the fields, 
the factories, and the workshops will think it expedient to 
do likewise If bonds, stocks and corporations repudiate 
the laws and rules of religion, the demons of anarchy and 
vice will speedily follow the example. L<aw-breaking and 
immoral commercial License are contagions. Repudiation of 

the Sabbath is professedly urged in the interests of the 
working-man. If he accepts this repudiation license he will 
be shamefully deceived. To him it will prove a delusion and 
a snare. If there art 1 men in the world who need the quiet 
rest of the Sabbath and a chance to give the mind and heart 
full play in what is pure ami elevated, they are those who 
earn their bread by the sweat of their brow. If capital, 
commerce, and corporations combine to abolish the Sabbath 
ami turn it into a day of noise and tumult, then the men of 
labor will have taken from them fifty-two days of the year, 
winch the laws and customs of Christian lands heretofore 
have given them, for their physical welfare, and for the 
moral and social improvement of themselves and families. 
Amusement and hilarity are well as incidental helps to good 
living, but those who are always talking about them are 
seldom good for anything else. We were not made and placed 
in this wonderous world merely for play, like kittens and mon- 
keys. The poet never spoke a truer word than when he said — 
"Life is real, life is earnest." Genuine patriotism does not 
encourage irreligion in any from. It clings to Christianity 
as its everlasting chart. Patriotism is reverential. It loves 
Liberty with an undying love, but it repudiates license as a 
deadly foe to good government and to human welfare. Man 



— 7 — 

has the right to do what he pleases, provided he does not 
infringe on the rights of others, nor violate the laws of God 
and his country. The Liberty which Patriotism teaches and 
defends, is the liberty which does its work in the harness of 
the law. The liberty which demands the license of anarchy 
and vice is more dangerous than a hostile army on the 
theater of war. America was founded and has achieved her 
greatness as a Christian land, and her citizens have the right 
to be protected in their Christian privileges and institutions, 
for these are the salt arid future safety of America and of 
lands which have drawn from her blood, or would copy her 
example. It is the highest patriotism to maintain the Ame- 
rica Nation ' n the foundations where the fathers and the 
Contitution placed it. Atheism is a deadly foe of the great 
Republic, and agnosticism is cojder than the polar seas. 
where individual and national life is impossible. If the 
Nation, which extends from ocean to ocean, and has resour- 
ces unequalled by any other in the would, is to be main- 
tained and shall furnish to the future a strength of govern- 
ment and of civilization unsurpassed in the annals of men, it 
must guard and stimulate its moral life with sleepless effort 
and undaunted courage. Its immediate duty is to strike 
down political and commercial corruption every where, 
to wage a war of extermination against Trusts, against all un- 
hallowed combinations which seek to control the food and 
material comforts of the people, and to constrain with an 
iron hand their natural and acquired rights. m And the pa- 
triotic demand for the destruction of these monstrosities is 
equally strong for the removal of the liquor saloons, which 
send forth a deadly malaria, a moral pestilence, more fatal 
to the Nation's lite and to the peace and welfare of human 
homes, than armed fortresses of treason in the villages and cities 



— fi- 
ef the land. All the foundations of American liberty, morality 

and law must be vratched with scrupulous care and unswerv- 
ing fidelity. Powerful and indispensible aids to this great 
work of national security are the sixty-three thousands pul- 
pits and churches, with their missionary hoards and agencies, 

to which should be added the three hundred and fifty thousand 
i( achers of the public schools, more potential for the de- 
fense and safety of the United States than are the trained 
armies of Burope for the security of its kingdoms and em- 
pires. 

Having thus rapidly glanced at the prt sent status of the 

nation, whose birth we commemorate, and emphasized some 

of the pressing duties of Americans, it may he allowed us on 
this memorable and prophetic day to cast and open eye on 
the future, to consider some things outside of America, set 
intimately and necessarily related to what concerns America. 
Ethnology, the laws of commercial development, and the 
of history, plainly indicate that at do distant day. four 
National Powers will chiefly control the Pacific, its islands, 
harbors, adjacent lands, its politics, trade, and prevailing 
civilizations. These are the United States, the Australian Re- 
public that is to he, and the Empires of ( 'hina and Japan. The 
United States and Australia are sufficiently alike in essential 
elements of human development and character to he considered 
,-is one, for our present purpose. China and Japan also have 
strong points of resemblance and are essencially Asiatic in con- 
tra-distinction to the American and Australian nations. To-day 
the United States and Australia have a population of seventy 
millions, possessing intelligence, enterprise, and determina- 
tion, unsurpassed by any people of ancient or modern times, 
with unbounded resources, and in the lifetime of persons now 
in this assemblage are to number two hundred and sixty 



— 9 — 

millions of souls, and at the close of the next century sis 
hundred millions. With Americans on the one side ;md the 
Pacific Asiatic peoples on the other, combining a thousand 
millions of population, it is not difficult to perceive that 
Europe will be practically out of the Pacific arena, and that 
its nations will do well to husband the resources of its home 
domain and of its Eastern and Southern borders. The 
islands of the Pacific necessarily will come under the influ- 
ence and seek the alliance, cither of the American and 
Australian nations, or of the Asiatic. Naturally they con- 
stitute a part of the commercial and political system of the 
New World, as the Grecian Archipelago and the British 
Isles belong to the commercial and political system of 
Europe. While maintaining their autonomy and independ- 
ence, it is for the people of these Islands to determine 
whether they prefer the United States or the Asiatics for 
allies. The great American nation has only good-will for 
the Hawaiian Kingdom. Of this the past and the present 
are a complete guaranty. In the annals of mankind I know 
not of a more striking example of national generosity than 
that of the conduct of the United States toward Hawaii. It 
is conceded by all well informed persons, that the prosperity 
of the United States, for the past twenty-five years, has no 
parallel in the commercial historj of nations, and tin 
every reason to believe that this prosperity will continue in 
tin 1 century to come. By the Reciprocity Treaty now in 
force, the United States allows Hawaii to share in he* 
wonderful prosperity, thereby more than doubling the pro- 
perty value and wealth producing power of this country, 
without perceptibly increasing the vast agregate property of 
the United States. Thus not cue of the States of the Ameri- 
can Union is treated by its National Government with more 
liberality than the Hawaiian Kingdom. 



JO 

The American Republic has been compared to ancient 
Rome in the prosperous periods of her dominion. It is cor- 
rect to say, that in her proudest days, Koine held not in her 
hand such elements of power as the United States now pos- 
ts. But Koine was always a menace to other nations. 
Conquest and annexation were fixed in her policy. For the 
most obvious reasons other nations stood in dread of her. 
But the American Republic seeks not to enlarge her borders 
at the expense of others. Since the Slave Power iii the Uni- 
ted States went down forever on a hundred battle-fields, an- 
nexation ceased to be the policy of the American Nation. 
This is plainly shown in that, when at the close of the war 
in 1865, with one million veteran soldiers at her command, 
Mexico on the South and Canada on the North, then at 
her mercy, were untouched, unsought. That vast army, 
twice as large as that which Napoleon led on his memorable 
Russian campaign, and much larger than that with which Ger- 
main smote down imperial France in l*7f>. was quietly dis- 
banded, and not an inch of foreign soil was coveted. Tin 
like aversion to annexation was manifested when the Ameri- 
can Senate refused to annex San Domingo with her luxuri- 
ant soil and genial climate, though it was ottered by her own 
rulers, and that rich domain lies near the American shores. 
Yes. American statesmen and the, American people realize 
that they have land enough, and by education, by conviction, 
and by interest, they hold it to lie just and wise to respect 
the autonomy and the rights of other countries and of other 
peoples. They do not believe it. well to send forth Meets 
and armies to seize islands and foreign lands, to appoint over 
them Governors, Judges, and other officials of political and 
military power. In the place of forcible annexation, the 
American Republic has substituted peaceful fraternity, gen- 



— 11 — 

erous reciprocity and good-will. It is this fraternal, humane 
policy of Christian civilization which befits America, and by 
which she can best maintain healthful life, and achieve that 
true glory, worthy of her commanding continental position 
and of her exalted leadership among the Christian nations of 
the world. While it could not justly be expected that the 
people of these independent and prosperous Islands should 
refuse any good thing or commercial advantage from Europe 
or Asia, the obvious and essential truth stands unrefuted by 
facts or reason, that America and Hawaii have reciprocal re- 
lations, stronger and closer than the latter can possibly have 
with other nations. There is no natural antagonism between 
them. In standing on fraternal lines they follow the rules of 
common-sense and of commercial logic. Near neighborhood 
has the obvious advantage over vast distance. Even when 
the enterprise and wealth of the United States shall have 
completed the Nacaragua canal and placed it at the service 
of the world's commerce, Europe will be five-fold more dis- 
tant from these Islands than America, and San Francisco will 
be seven thousand miles nearer Honolulu than London. No 
cunning devices of men can overcome the cold mathematics 
of this great odds in distance. Besides, the United States 
and Hawaii belong to the New World, and their advancing 
civilization has a common stamp, as all who have traveled 
from Boston via Plymouth Bock, New York, Independence 
Hall, and San Francisco have quickly observed. It will not 
be by war. nor by diplomatic fencing and formularies, that 
that Europe will grow less and less in the Pacific, but this 
will come by the irresistible logic of increasing population 
and of superior commercial and social forces. It would be 
vain to oppose this resistless march of nature and of destiny, 
which are agents of (rod's will, before which imperial ambi- 



— 12 — 

tions perish and armies and navies crumble and melt away 
as the mists on the mountains are dissipated by the sun, and 
icebergs arc crushed and dissolved by the ocean wavi s. 
When America shall have her """six hundred millions of peo- 
ple and Australia, China and Japan as many more, then 
Seward's prophesy will be more than verified, and around 
the shores and on bhe waters of the Pacific will trans- 
pire the great events and be developed the larger commerce 
of the world. In this splendid drama of future civilization 
and of commercial [tower these Islands will have their part. 
In the presence of SUch an auspicious future as these facts 
indicate, patriotism is a supreme duty — a patriotism not of 
Carthaginian 'or Roman type, which, inspired by heathen sel- 
fishness and ambition, hated and antagonized other nations. 
but 8 patriotism horn of the Sermon on the Mount and 
taught by fche great Apostle to the Gentiles, which recognizes 
that God has made of one blood all the nations of the earth 
— a patriotism which in Philadelphia, July 4th, 1776, gave 
wisdom and power to that remarkable body of men who made 
this day immortal a patriotism which seeks the highest 
good of all within its horizon, whose radiant circle of hope 
includes this world and the Great Hereafter— a patriotism 
of moral and heroic devotion, which would keep America on 
the plane of fraternal and humane development, and which as 
an ever-living force, is necessary to make these Islands the 
happy homes of civilized men, sparkling gems in the great 
Western ocean, more beautiful than the famed islands of the 
Mediterranean in the brightest days of ancient Greece. It is 



* James Bryce, a distinguished British author, in his recent greal 
work on the " American Commonwealth."' speaks oi Ainerieansas "The 
mighty democracy, destined in another century tO form one half of 
civilized mankind."* Vol. I, page 14'.). 



13 

the hope and the prayer of all true Americans of to-day, that 
over this Bplendid panorama of the future Western world, its 
cities, states, governments, schools, its rich commerce, busy 
industries, and teeming populations, may rest the perpetual 
sunshine of Christian Faith and Republican Liberty, and in 
all its vast area be taught and practised the brotherhood 
of nations, peace ami good will among men. 




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